But today the attention is focusing almost exclusively on the Standard. Various of its editors have apologised, and "the person responsible" has been suspended "pending an investigation".

Now, I don't know, but I don't think the Standard has done anything illegal here. Embargoes are agreements between source and newspaper; if I get a PR email saying "EMBARGOED 12PM: NEW SAMSUNG GALAXY TO BE RELEASED" etc, and I release it early, I might not get any more PR emails from Samsung (please God) but I haven't broken the law. Maybe it's different for Budgets, but I don't think so: presumably it's the leaking prematurely that is illegal, if anything is. But someone else can correct me on that.

I would, though, like to pre-empt the investigation by the Standard. I can guess who the "person responsible" was, and how it happened: the person responsible would have been someone no older than 25, who tweets the front page every day, and who is probably paid about £18,000 a year on a temp contract to be in charge of the social media stuff. He or she would have tweeted the front page as usual, because it wouldn't have occurred to them that this is a Special Front Page. And now they're getting the heat from a whole country.

Of course I may be wrong. But it's a simple mistake, and I was a similarly easily confused 26-year-old when I joined here and made similarly stupid mistakes – some much worse – which I was lucky enough never went public in the same way. Don't waste time and money "investigating" it, if I'm right, and don't smash some poor kid's career apart over an unlucky mistake. God knows this industry doesn't need any more problems right now.

• NOTE: have revised my £23,000 estimate down to £18,000 after various people who actually do similar jobs pointed out that I was probably wildly overstating the kid's earnings. Oh and I'm using the word "poor" as in "unfortunate", not as in "impoverished"